How Democrats and Republicans Can Overcome Authoritarians

The quest of authoritarians is for unity and conformity. People with authoritarian dispositions can be good, law-abiding citizens. However, when their fears are awakened, they can become cruel and tolerate and even encourage the cruelty of others. If their fears are awakened, they willingly destroy democratic institutions.

Leaders like Trump know how to stoke the fears of authoritarians, often conjuring up hordes of “others” (usually dark, dangerous, and sick) who seek to infiltrate the population and disrupt the nation’s conformity and order. Because American demographics have changed so dramatically in recent decades as new groups seek to be included, the fears of authoritarians are easier to arouse. Trump is a master manipulator of these fears.

Erich Fromm’s seminal 1941 work “Escape from freedom” explained that a part of humanity actually finds freedom burdensome. As societies become noisier, more diverse, and more complex, the authoritarians among us are eager to free themselves from the burden of freedom. They prefer the protection of a strongman to the burdens of democracy.

Because authoritarians and those who would manipulate them are always among us, democracy always contains the seeds of its own destruction. The power to choose includes the power to choose authoritarianism. Authoritarians under the spell of a strongman will use their electoral freedoms to install a leader like Trump who promises to strip them of those freedoms. Therefore, the manifesto of Project 2025, meticulously applying this promise to every area of ​​American life, was greeted by many Americans with a shocking lack of alarm.

The Republican Party, as it has evolved over the last few decades, includes both authoritarians and traditional conservatives (what I call status quo conservatives). But these two psychological “types” are not natural allies. Conservatives are primarily averse to change (difference in time), while authoritarians abhor complexity (difference in space). So authoritarians and conservatives share some distaste for difference. But they differ radically if they find complexity or change More unacceptable. And this matters at crucial historical moments, such as when a powerful man promises to rid society of complexity at the cost of massive social change. That’s why true conservatives like former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who are opposed to both change and authoritarianism, can be a democracy’s strongest bulwark against the dangers posed by authoritarian revolution in moments like this one.

It seems that a good number of American conservatives are willing to play this role. This election season, I was tasked with analyzing a nationally representative survey of over 5,000 Americans (including appropriately weighted oversamples of minority and newly registered voters). As Vice President Kamala Harris’ “hope and joy” presidential campaign got under way in August, we found nearly a third of true conservatives in this representative sample saying they were likely to vote for Harris, moving away from the chaotic autocrat who is committed to overthrowing established institutions. and norms. They seem unwilling to risk massive disorder and violence for the promise of greater unity and similarity in an uncertain future.

This fearless third of conservatives in the sample trust the vote and don’t appreciate elections being undermined. They reject the idea that Christians and religious freedom are under threat and worry about destabilizing climate shocks and culture wars around race and gender. They scoff at the ideas of anti-white discrimination and the revival of old masculinity, and are appalled at the societal ruptures and damage caused by overturning the established law around a woman’s right to choose.

So the way to build a pro-democracy coalition is for all people who embrace democracy, whether liberal or conservative, to form an alliance to overcome those who are horrified by the chaos of freedom and the nation’s growing diversity.

Again, the results of my poll may help wash away some harmful myths by alleviating the caricature that Republicans and Democrats have of each other. My analyzes of this data indicate that both the Democratic and Republican parties are made up of a variety of psychological types: 39% of those who identify as Republicans are very authoritarian, but so are 22% of Democrats. Seventy-eight percent of Republicans are true conservatives, as are 47% of Democrats. Look at it from another angle: About half of authoritarians are Republicans and about a third are Democrats, while true conservatives are split similarly.

Finally, and perhaps most surprising to many: authoritarians are by no means irredeemable. They are not inherently bad. Authoritarianism is just a different way of being human.

Societies seem to thrive when there is a balanced mix of people who monitor boundaries and shun the strange and unfamiliar, and others who seek novelty and variety. Understand that those strange beings who attend MAGA rallies do not represent the usual authoritarian, who in better times is more like your helpful and well-intentioned but sometimes intrusive and judgmental neighbor. Those with authoritarian personalities will always be with us. And they are very malleable, for better or for worse.

The results of my recent survey reinforce my own previous investigations into voting for Trump in 2016: that with the right kinds of appeals and support, a significant portion of authoritarians can reject the strongman who constantly invokes chaos and disorder but never delivers that promised second act of renewed unity and consensus. They can reinvest their desire for unity and sameness in an alternative “normative order”—perhaps a new way forward.

My most recent polling results suggest that nearly 30 percent of the incumbents who vow to vote are likely or certain to vote for Harris. They are finding new meaning and belonging in a more joyful, hopeful, optimistic — that is, classically American — movement that promises that there is “more that unites us than divides us.” The rest of us just need to welcome back these (quiet and now quiet) authoritarians instead of gleefully mocking and diligently rejecting a third of our countrymen – which is hardly democratic, a good strategy for winning elections or favoring stabilization. of a republic of 340 million.

Karen Stenner is a political psychologist and behavioral scientist. She is the author of The Authoritarian Dynamic.